Well, this is either incredibly sad or utterly hilarious. Apple will stop selling the Mac Pro in Europe on 1 March... Because it doesn't comply with "new" European regulations that will come into effect that day. I say "new" between quotation marks because said regulation was announced four years ago. The regulation deals with increased protection requirements concerning electrical ports and fan guards. "The new requirements necessitate fan guards and some increased protection on the ports on the electrical system," explained Apple, "Because Mac Pro is not compliant with the regulations, we do want to meet that regulation and therefore not offer Mac Pro beyond 1 March." So, a standards body is faster at updating its standards than Apple is at updating its Mac Pro. It illustrates just how much Apple cares about pro users. The last significant update to the Mac Pro occurred in 2010, but Tim Cook did promise an update to the product later in 2013.

There's some truth in what you say. Many times innovation and the launch of new products to the market are slowed down because of unnecessary regulations. I mean in the EU some things that are not required at all by US and Japan regulations are mandatory.. and the US and Japan regulations are considered to be of a high standard, but hey, more business for European certification authorities!

This is especially bad for small companies which are trying to enter the market; more regulations != better results, but in Europe regulations = good, regardless if they are useless or not. No problem for the big guys, a royal PITA for the small guy who is just trying to make a living with his company, and who has to bear huge costs just to bring a product to the market.

It is sad to see you voted down to -11. I voted you up.

The classic example are cars. In Europe they are over-regulated to the point that you cannot do any meaningful modification to the vehicle, as if the state built the car and gave you it as a gift (yeah.. really?). In the US and in Australia, regulations are very permissive when it comes to tuning and modifications, yet I don't see cars burning down.